Need help getting better at the bow

[Chojoukif]

I will try to explain roughly what I perceive to be the problem but if you don't feel like reading you can just ignore this message and give me general advice.

So I started a new playthrough recently and I decided to give some of the other weapons a go (I mained lance and greatsword in my first playthrough if its relevant), little did I know, I am unbelievably bad with the bow. There's a lot of little and big things I feel like I am not getting about the bow, enough that I feel like its going to be hard to solve all on my own, so I thought maybe its a good time to ask for some advice.

Just for general context I just beat Velkanna on my file, hunt took 30 minutes, the longest
single target hunt I have ever had, I was using the rathalos bow (penultimate tier) with the shrieking legiana armor plus 2 piece anjanath for the stamina cap + max bow charge, decorations suck for the most part. This hunt was an outlier though, a more typical master rank hunt time for me is about 15-20 minutes (well, some of the early monsters go by significantly faster, I think I got a 6 minutes time on a great Jagras)

1) Efficiency:
Bow has limited ammo, and unlike bowguns it does not seem to me like you are intended to craft more on the fly (the ratios are too unforgiving + you can't even hold that many materials to begin with). That is why every shot counts for the bow. In my experience, the 50 power coating you can hold have not been enough to finish a hunt, and this is a problem. I think the main problem here is that the damage per shot is not sufficient, typically I get about 60-120 per fully charged shot ( 120 is presumably a crit on a weakspot, 60 is a regular hit on a non weakspot), just using velkanna as an example, apparently she has about 23,400HP, that means with my max damage of 120 I would need 195 power shots to kill her (Of course I know there are other damage sources like wallbangs, palico, bombs, ailments, thousand dragons etc. But even if we cut that estimate to half that's still a 100ish critshots at max charge that all have to land on a weakspot which is still kinda rough).

So this is a multifaceted issue. Partly it is a skill issue. On top of the raw lack of damage, I am missing a lot of shots (I am also counting missing the weakspot as a miss, but I do also just straight up not hit quite regularly). Even when the monster appears to be stationary little quick movements can easily make me miss, particularly when aiming for velkannas tiny head. Perhaps I should not be aiming for the head if I don't have a down? Maybe its just something you get better at over time? I don't know. The other wrinkle here is whether to spam shots or to fully charge. The previous efficiency calculation gets even worse if you spam and the propensity to miss also gets worse. I tend to try to skip the first level and only shoot the second and third, and on a down spam all 3 charge levels for maximum dps, maybe I am doing something wrong there. It could be partly a playstyle problem, as of now I am mostly ignoring the circle combo and just sticking with the charged shots, but maybe that is a mistake. I also try to sneak in a dragon piercer at the end of a down and spam thousand dragons as much as poossible. The other thing to consider is the overall build, more on that in a bit.

So yeah, overall there are a lot of variables here but basically I need more damage faster, ideally without having to restock. (One restock I can stomach but any more than that I feel like I am failing at the bow)

2) Build:
So it kinda depends what point in the game we are at but for now here's how I see it. The first question I have is whether spare shot and max bow charge are a trap. The thing is, those skills are awesome, but having to run 3 suboptimal armor pieces to get one of them is an insidiously steep cost. Maybe I would be better off just running a pure affinity build with some constitution?

The other big question that I have is whether I should be investing into elemental bows, I have heard elemental bows have the best damage but I did not observe this myself in my limited testing (however my build sucks and I don't have good decorations).

Another thing is how much should I be investing into the status coatings? The first bow build that I made was a sleep bombadier build with the kulu bow that spammed sleep, blast and mega barrel bombs. It worked decently well but I wasn't entirely happy with it. Can a status build work or is it fools gold? The other thing I keep hearing is that power coating is the only coating that matters.

Just as an aside, what do you think about stonethrower? Assuming the slinger ammo to damage formula for thousand dragons is linear it is like a 50% damage boost (maybe more for some ammo types?). I don't know what percentage of the damage comes from thousand dragons but I do try to spam it as much as possible, to me it feels like it might be worth it. Right now I am running stonethrower 3 literally because I don't have anything else to fill the slots but I am curious whether you think I should keep it in the build.

3) Playstyle:
Kind of hard to pinpoint exactly what the problem is here, I would welcome any general beginner tips, but lets mention a couple of things. Like a said previously, I would appreaciate an explanation of what the circle combo is for, to me it feels like you are getting just a bit of extra damage at close range but in exchange you are leaving yourself very vulnerable due to the animation commitment of the second spread shot, the arc shot is another thing I don't get, I know it does KO damage but the damage values are so low I don't really want to ever use it.

What about the dragon piercer, should I try to use it more? To me it honestly does not even look like it has very good dps, I only use it for wakeups (when I am out of slinger ammo) and at the end of downs.

The other major thing I wanna ask about is dodging. Should I try to abuse the invicibiity frames more? Possibly with some evade window. What about evade extender? Often times I feel like I am trapped in some of these late game fights. Acidic glavenus in particular was miserable, he basically has infinite range + wide sweeping attacks, I got hit a lot and I don't know what I could have done to dodge short of superman diving or iframing.

anyway, sorry for the long post, and thanks in advance.

[Bobucles]

Most bows I've seen avoid the slower attacks and use a pattern of hop/shoot/hop/shoot most of the time. They stick around a lance's max attack range. Bow spends half of its life hopping around, to raise the bow level and to avoid attacks. Iframes are a major part of the play style so evade window/extender will get a ton of use. They have a ton of attacks, so elemental damage gives very solid returns. It's worth getting a bow build for each element, even if the only difference is the bow.

Mushroomancer 3 is excellent for bow. It unlocks devil's blight dash juice and mandragora max potions. Both are amazing for bow, for the fast healing and the stamina it needs to function.

[ominumi]

Coconut rain and dragon piercer are for utility NOT for damage. Dragon piercer can cut tails.
Stamina management should be top priority for bow. You're going to use a lot of stamina. need to lower the cost and have fast recover.
If your damage numbers is 160 against Velkana while taking 30 minutes to kill it, you're wasting time somewhere.
Elements on bows are a good thing. Bows can deal good damage with the right element weakness. Element shouldn't be overlook on bows.
You can craft ammo and coating mid combat. Just put the crafting on the radial menu. Inbetween shots or repositioning you can spam the radial menu to craft coating.

[Mercutio]

1. Get a bow for EVERY elemental weakness. Bows are king at Elemental damage as you can dodge and attack in the same move. You will need to have a build for each weakness (Water/Ice/Fire/Lightning)

2. Decorations are huge for a bow user. you want Weakness Exploit, Critical Eye, Mighty Bow, Elemental Jewels and the knowledge of what monsters are weak to what.

3. Slide and Hit while staying in range is your bread and butter. You will want to be able to stay on the 4th charge (With Mighty Bow deco) for as long as you can as the dmg boost is immense. You can also use your slide as a dodge so learning to use it in conjunction on what the monster is trying to use against you is HUGE.

4. The ball drop and Dragon Piercer are not used for Dmg. The balls are good for KO's, but if you have melee people in your team you will be interrupting their attacks unless they have resistance to it. Quite frankly Dragon Piercer is only good if you are trying to cut off a tail or if a Large monster just got KO'ed. Even then it's debatable to ever use it.

5. If you are relying on the arrow coats to be able to kill a monster you have bigger issues at hand. It sounds like you are being too defensive or not enough offensive output. Farming Deco's and better bows might help you more if that's the case.

6. I would highly recommend looking up Bow guides. They will show you better ways to get higher DPS outputs with just changing your playstyle while fighting. They are 100% helpful. When I first started I didn't slide as much as I thought it was a waste of Stamina... boy was I wrong LOL

[Hammer Of Evil]

i'll try to answer your post with the same energy you asked the questions op, nice discussion.

i only have about 400 kills with bow, so i'll relate as best i can to you. unfortunately in iceborne i've only built a single raw bow that is pretty ineffective vs various matchups, as one would guess, its best suited to elemental builds (read: hammer has no zenny to make anymore right now and is grinding the angry tempered saiyan greatape quest for 200k zenny per run T_T)

the main issue that tanks dps in the bow from what i've seen in the wild is
- incorrect combo chains or spamming incorrect skills. (spamming dragonpiercer and falling terraria goblin spikeballs is not the play)
- not enough decorations (bow is incredibly decoration heavy you can't sacrifice a single slot, even on fatalis armor if you want to have tippy top dps)

• efficiency - with regards to using ammo, i don't actually use much ammo. i use builds that synergize with 'close range coating' and stay in the critical affinity range at all times, shooting the most vulnerable HZV as possible. I don't really use coatings unless i want to proc a stun or sleep
  
  
• build - this is a thing, the bow is forced to focus on one or two subsets inside its combo such as 'charging your shots' or 'shoot, combo slide into thousand dragons' or even the '3 shot charge combo ended with spreadshot at the end'
  
  the build should indicate what your max dps combos are, ammo you should use, and your best HZV matchups.
  
  unfortunately with bow theres no '1 bow to rule them all' especially since IB remixed the bow due to how powerful it was in base world. (sub 2 minute AT kushala kills ayoo)
  
  
• playstyle:
  
  again this is dictated by the build - you build the bow to focus up on the parts of the shots or moves you want to do. using your i-frames is deathly important with bow, since the lack of physical defense by having a ranged weapon will usually get you one hit killed.
  
  a really good tip is to stay close-er to the monster. not right on top of him, but close enough that he doesn't do any 'crazy jumping, ranged, etc' attack spam, that some monsters are famous for.
  
  yian garuga is happy to sit back and shoot fireballs at you and then leap and jaw smash you (which is his heaviest attack), whereas if you're close to him, he'll kick, and try to swipe at you, rather than hitting you with his strongest stuff.
  
  a mistake of a ranged player is staying too far away from the monster. it causes the monster to jump around the arrena unpredictably, and ends up increasing your dps downtime - for everyone in the hunt.
  
  don't spam dragonpiercer unless you build for dragonpiercer. the dps on this type is pretty low though, compared to a normal 3 shot normalshots build
  
  evade extender will help you dodge slide right out of any huge acid baths that acidic glavenus will throw at you, as well as others. dont feel bad using EW and EE, if you are riding the meat cart you're not shooting the monster, right?

[cruste]

nobody mentioned walljumps so i will that is a nice dps boost similiar to ledge hopping, so check the maps for these areas, use traps, if possible to keep the monster in the correct killzone

it all boils down to correct builds, while all the stuns depend on dps

nobody can help with ew and ee, this depends on your skilllevel and the monster.
old farts can't compete with the young chads so they might invest a few points in these skills

sometimes evasion mantle is all you need and the monster is hopefully dead shortly after it expired

[Chojoukif]

Originally posted by Hammer Of Evil:

i'll try to answer your post with the same energy you asked the questions op, nice discussion.

i only have about 400 kills with bow, so i'll relate as best i can to you. unfortunately in iceborne i've only built a single raw bow that is pretty ineffective vs various matchups, as one would guess, its best suited to elemental builds (read: hammer has no zenny to make anymore right now and is grinding the angry tempered saiyan greatape quest for 200k zenny per run T_T)

the main issue that tanks dps in the bow from what i've seen in the wild is
- incorrect combo chains or spamming incorrect skills. (spamming dragonpiercer and falling terraria goblin spikeballs is not the play)
- not enough decorations (bow is incredibly decoration heavy you can't sacrifice a single slot, even on fatalis armor if you want to have tippy top dps)

• efficiency - with regards to using ammo, i don't actually use much ammo. i use builds that synergize with 'close range coating' and stay in the critical affinity range at all times, shooting the most vulnerable HZV as possible. I don't really use coatings unless i want to proc a stun or sleep
  
  
• build - this is a thing, the bow is forced to focus on one or two subsets inside its combo such as 'charging your shots' or 'shoot, combo slide into thousand dragons' or even the '3 shot charge combo ended with spreadshot at the end'
  
  the build should indicate what your max dps combos are, ammo you should use, and your best HZV matchups.
  
  unfortunately with bow theres no '1 bow to rule them all' especially since IB remixed the bow due to how powerful it was in base world. (sub 2 minute AT kushala kills ayoo)
  
  
• playstyle:
  
  again this is dictated by the build - you build the bow to focus up on the parts of the shots or moves you want to do. using your i-frames is deathly important with bow, since the lack of physical defense by having a ranged weapon will usually get you one hit killed.
  
  a really good tip is to stay close-er to the monster. not right on top of him, but close enough that he doesn't do any 'crazy jumping, ranged, etc' attack spam, that some monsters are famous for.
  
  yian garuga is happy to sit back and shoot fireballs at you and then leap and jaw smash you (which is his heaviest attack), whereas if you're close to him, he'll kick, and try to swipe at you, rather than hitting you with his strongest stuff.
  
  a mistake of a ranged player is staying too far away from the monster. it causes the monster to jump around the arrena unpredictably, and ends up increasing your dps downtime - for everyone in the hunt.
  
  don't spam dragonpiercer unless you build for dragonpiercer. the dps on this type is pretty low though, compared to a normal 3 shot normalshots build
  
  evade extender will help you dodge slide right out of any huge acid baths that acidic glavenus will throw at you, as well as others. dont feel bad using EW and EE, if you are riding the meat cart you're not shooting the monster, right?

Thanks for the reply.

So with regards to the incorrect combo chains point, pretty much the way I do it wallbangs->tenderize->thousand dragons spam->hop shoot hop shoot. I'm sure the execution could be improved but I guess this doesn't apply to my case.

For the decorations, yeah, that applies big time and its a big problem. The thing is though, I don't really care about maxxing my damage, I just want my hunt times to be comparable to what I can achieve with other weapons. It might be a situation where the hunt time decreases exponentially as you get better decorations, if that's the case that would really suck as getting all the decorations you need can take hours and hours of grinding (for example, in my first playthrough I got my first tenderizer decoration after beating fatalis, having fought almost every monster in the game, including the guiding lands version, and having farmed several sets for 3 weapon classes). Well, I suppose I just have to hope that I can still achieve results with a suboptimal build.

Its interesting what you said about not using coatings, that's the first time I hear of that approach. Tbh, the close range coating is not attrociously bad, but it does seem to be a 30-40% damage decrease from power coating. I guess if the build is strong and you know how to use the weapon well you can afford to do it, not to mention, since its an unlimited coating it allows you to spam shots which raises your dps, I might do some testing to see if it affects my hunt times at all.

So I guess what you mean by "the build should indicate what your max dps combos are" is that if you have the spread skill you should use the spread shot finisher, if your have the piercing skill use more dragon piercer etc. Well with my decorations I can't really have either XD

Ok so I suppose at the very least there is no obviously superior build for the bow, max bow charge works, raw affinity works, spare shot also works (I assume). I guess once again its all about the decorations. Although I strongly dislike doing so, maybe I should look up some meta builds to see what the pros are running.

Ok got it, Iframes matter for the bow. The mantra in monster hunter seems to be "forget about the iframes and just dodge" but I guess there are exceptions. I gotta say, the window for it is so tight by default that I am going to have to put some evade window in the build then (I can't even iframe roars most of the time even with a visual cue to help me).

Staying close is a good tip I think, what you described does happen to me on occasion and it can be very frustrating. I guess you kinda wanna be in a range where you can dodge away if you need to but not so far that the monster charges you. Still dunno what you do about acidic glavenus though, his tail is longer than thee long arm of the law, I guess that's where you bust out the evade window 5.

Yeah, I agree that is a good way to think about EE and EW. If they cause you to take less damage that means you have more time to attack, so they are actually boosting your damage. I guess I am just used to the greatsword and lance, which can use EW and EE but they don't need them. Even for fatalis I didn't need them and I had no trouble getting sub 20 minute kills once I practiced enough.

[Chojoukif]

Originally posted by Mercutio:

1. Get a bow for EVERY elemental weakness. Bows are king at Elemental damage as you can dodge and attack in the same move. You will need to have a build for each weakness (Water/Ice/Fire/Lightning)

2. Decorations are huge for a bow user. you want Weakness Exploit, Critical Eye, Mighty Bow, Elemental Jewels and the knowledge of what monsters are weak to what.

3. Slide and Hit while staying in range is your bread and butter. You will want to be able to stay on the 4th charge (With Mighty Bow deco) for as long as you can as the dmg boost is immense. You can also use your slide as a dodge so learning to use it in conjunction on what the monster is trying to use against you is HUGE.

4. The ball drop and Dragon Piercer are not used for Dmg. The balls are good for KO's, but if you have melee people in your team you will be interrupting their attacks unless they have resistance to it. Quite frankly Dragon Piercer is only good if you are trying to cut off a tail or if a Large monster just got KO'ed. Even then it's debatable to ever use it.

5. If you are relying on the arrow coats to be able to kill a monster you have bigger issues at hand. It sounds like you are being too defensive or not enough offensive output. Farming Deco's and better bows might help you more if that's the case.

6. I would highly recommend looking up Bow guides. They will show you better ways to get higher DPS outputs with just changing your playstyle while fighting. They are 100% helpful. When I first started I didn't slide as much as I thought it was a waste of Stamina... boy was I wrong LOL

Thanks for the feedback

1. Noted, but how do you fit all of this into a build? Affinity, critical element, max bow charge up, elemental damage, stamina skills. Its just too much, what do you prioritize in this scenario?

2. Yup, I hope I roll some good ones sometime soon. Out of those I have 2 1 slot critical eye gems, and the 4 slot that you get for free. Not a great start XD

3. Ok so I guess you are suggesting charging up to the 4th level for each shot? (with the charging evade of course). From what I have heard this approach has lower dps but it doesn't spend coatings as quickly so maybe its worth it in the end.

4. Ok got it, well I don't think I am going to be cutting any tails with dragon piercer so I guess I am not missing out on that front. And yeah, I don't know how that 2 damage per ball trickle is going to KO anything but I have heard that it can work so I guess I have to believe it works. I assume I can mostly ignore this too.

5. Well I am not really "relying" on the coatings, but they are a big damage boost and so naturally I want to have them be active most if not all of the time. I actually had to use the close range coating in the later half of that velkanna fight because I ran out of power coating (as in I didn't have any even in storage), that was probably part of the reason why it took so long. Personally I don't feel like I am being too defensive, just inefficient. Well, in one regard it may be true, I think in general when I play bow I spend too much time fishing for wallbangs. I feel like my weapons damage is limited and so I need to squeeze out every little bit of "free" damage I can, but running around the monster waiting for an oppurtunity to wallbang does take time, its one of those things thats hard to quantify but I think I probabaly spend like 4 minutes per hunt just doing that

6. I have actually looked at 3 different guides prior to making this post. They are good for getting started but I find that they don't address some of the practical problems you might face or some of the finer points. As an unrelated example, back when I was learning lance I was baffled at how anyone could play the weapon due to how slow it was to block after any action. fortuitously I accidentally discovered that the way you are supposed to play it is that you counter instead of blocking, which is nearly instant. All the guides mentioned the counter, and even some of the finer points of it like how you take more chip damage in the super counter vs the regular counter etc. but none of the guides I looked at mentioned this basic practical point that the way you block with lance is by countering, not by blocking. Likewise the guides I have looked at don't really address the issues I've raised, they tell me that I can charge my shots to make my coatings last longer but what do I do when that's not enough? They tell me the spread shot finisher exists but not what its utility is. Well, one thing I have not looked at that I should definitely look at is metabuilds, just to have a baseline for what I need to aim for, so you got me there.

[Omnicide]

I have no idea really, I main SnS and only play around with bow in the training area and sometimes in the fixed arena loadouts.

Still, I'll weigh in on dragon piercer, it's for sniping isn't it? It has the longest range of any shot. It seems like through a combination of traps, smoke bombs, and just generally knowing when you can run away and set them up can get you a lot of juicy shots off from relative safety.

Good status application and stun values let you transition into your more meleeish combos or wall bang or w/e you want.

I'm no expert but I think 30 minutes is fine for an unoptimized run at velky, that fight more than any other stalled me out before I learned it and leveled up my playstyle a bit more with SnS. I honestly think it would be a headache with a bow, since the safest place around velk is underneath save for that one move.

[IxianMace]

Originally posted by Chojoukif:

Perhaps I should not be aiming for the head if I don't have a down?

The head is a weak spot for most monsters; I suggest you try to hit it as much as possible unless you're going for something specific like breaking the wings or some other body part/weak spot.

Originally posted by Chojoukif:

The other wrinkle here is whether to spam shots or to fully charge. The previous efficiency calculation gets even worse if you spam and the propensity to miss also gets worse. I tend to try to skip the first level and only shoot the second and third, and on a down spam all 3 charge levels for maximum dps, maybe I am doing something wrong there. It could be partly a playstyle problem, as of now I am mostly ignoring the circle combo and just sticking with the charged shots, but maybe that is a mistake. I also try to sneak in a dragon piercer at the end of a down and spam thousand dragons as much as poossible.

I suggest you go to the training room and try combos out, noting how long it takes you to complete each combo and how much damage you do overall. When I was first getting into the bow, I fully charged all my shots. Hunts took a long time because my damage was very low. I realised that in the time it took me to fully charge my bow, I could have fired three charged shots for more damage overall.

Your bread-and-butter combos should involve charging sidesteps and charged shots. When your bow is at maximum charge level and you can't continue your combo with another charged shot, continue the combo with a power shot. From here, you can go into arc shot -> power shot -> arc shot -> repeat as long as you feel comfortable or have the stamina.

As for dragon piercer, I find it very situational. Its combination of having a long startup and long recovery leaves you vulnerable for a long time, plus the damage isn't that great unless you build specifically for it and fire it down the length of monsters with long bodies. Yes it can cut tails, but you'll have your work cut out for you if that's what you're focusing on during the fight. I've heard thousand dragons can be good with piercing pods, but I don't really use it outside of just messing around for fun.

When a monster is down, I charge the bow with charging sidesteps and/or charged shots and then alternate between power shots and arc shots for as long as I can.

Originally posted by Chojoukif:

So it kinda depends what point in the game we are at but for now here's how I see it. The first question I have is whether spare shot and max bow charge are a trap. The thing is, those skills are awesome, but having to run 3 suboptimal armor pieces to get one of them is an insidiously steep cost. Maybe I would be better off just running a pure affinity build with some constitution?

Bow Charge Plus is good, but you can skip Spare Shot for the bow. The bow already needs so much in terms of armour skills that you'll want to pick your skills really carefully. I suggest you get a few levels of Constitution in your bow build and then build for the usual crit-meta skills (Critical Eye, Critical Boost, Weakness Exploit).

Originally posted by Chojoukif:

The other big question that I have is whether I should be investing into elemental bows, I have heard elemental bows have the best damage but I did not observe this myself in my limited testing (however my build sucks and I don't have good decorations).

Absolutely invest into elemental bows. Build a bow (and a build) for each element. At some point, you can build for a set skill called True Critical Element, which will boost the damage of your elemental bows even further. If you have Kjarr bows from Kulve Taroth, they come with inbuilt Critical Element, allowing you to leave True Critical Element out and build for something else if you wish.

Originally posted by Chojoukif:

Another thing is how much should I be investing into the status coatings? The first bow build that I made was a sleep bombadier build with the kulu bow that spammed sleep, blast and mega barrel bombs. It worked decently well but I wasn't entirely happy with it. Can a status build work or is it fools gold? The other thing I keep hearing is that power coating is the only coating that matters.

Power coating is a good generic coating to use to boost your damage. The status-effect coatings (Sleep, Paralysis, Blast) all depend on what you're hunting. There's also Close-Range coating, which reduces the range of your bow's shots but increases their damage when you attack the monster from up close. This can be good if you can stay close enough to the monster to keep within the effective range of this coating.

Originally posted by Chojoukif:

Just as an aside, what do you think about stonethrower? Assuming the slinger ammo to damage formula for thousand dragons is linear it is like a 50% damage boost (maybe more for some ammo types?). I don't know what percentage of the damage comes from thousand dragons but I do try to spam it as much as possible, to me it feels like it might be worth it. Right now I am running stonethrower 3 literally because I don't have anything else to fill the slots but I am curious whether you think I should keep it in the build.

I haven't done much testing to see whether having more slinger ammo increases the damage of thousand dragons, but I don't use thousand dragons much because it requires slinger ammo, which I usually use to throw monsters into walls.

Originally posted by Chojoukif:

3) Playstyle:
Kind of hard to pinpoint exactly what the problem is here, I would welcome any general beginner tips, but lets mention a couple of things. Like a said previously, I would appreaciate an explanation of what the circle combo is for, to me it feels like you are getting just a bit of extra damage at close range but in exchange you are leaving yourself very vulnerable due to the animation commitment of the second spread shot, the arc shot is another thing I don't get, I know it does KO damage but the damage values are so low I don't really want to ever use it.

What about the dragon piercer, should I try to use it more? To me it honestly does not even look like it has very good dps, I only use it for wakeups (when I am out of slinger ammo) and at the end of downs.

Not sure what you mean about the 'circle combo', as I play with mouse and keyboard, but the arc shot can be considered a combo filler for maintaining your bow's charge level while you spam power shot. If you can get the arc shot's projectiles to rain on the monster's head, you can KO the monster. The individual hit values may be low, but they add up over time, especially if you have multiple arc shots raining down on the monster's head.

At the end of the day, it's your hunt, so do what you want, but as someone learning the bow, I eventually moved away from using dragon piercer in favour of charging sidestep -> charged shot combos and arc shot -> power shot -> arc shot combos.

Originally posted by Chojoukif:

The other major thing I wanna ask about is dodging. Should I try to abuse the invicibiity frames more? Possibly with some evade window. What about evade extender?

Instead of trying to iframe attacks, I try not to be where the monster is going to hit when I see an attack coming. If I can't move out of the way, then I'll try to iframe the attack, but it's a last resort. I don't use Evade Window or Evade Extender unless there's nothing better to put on my build. Building for support skills (Constitution), survivability/comfort (Health Boost, Stun Resistance), crit-meta skills (Critical Eye, Critical Boost, Weakness Exploit), and elemental skills ((True) Critical Element, Fire/Thunder/Ice/Water Attack) means sacrifices may have to be made somewhere.

[Hammer Of Evil]

Originally posted by Chojoukif:

Thanks for the reply.

So with regards to the incorrect combo chains point, pretty much the way I do it wallbangs->tenderize->thousand dragons spam->hop shoot hop shoot. I'm sure the execution could be improved but I guess this doesn't apply to my case.

For the decorations, yeah, that applies big time and its a big problem. The thing is though, I don't really care about maxxing my damage, I just want my hunt times to be comparable to what I can achieve with other weapons. It might be a situation where the hunt time decreases exponentially as you get better decorations, if that's the case that would really suck as getting all the decorations you need can take hours and hours of grinding (for example, in my first playthrough I got my first tenderizer decoration after beating fatalis, having fought almost every monster in the game, including the guiding lands version, and having farmed several sets for 3 weapon classes). Well, I suppose I just have to hope that I can still achieve results with a suboptimal build.

Its interesting what you said about not using coatings, that's the first time I hear of that approach. Tbh, the close range coating is not attrociously bad, but it does seem to be a 30-40% damage decrease from power coating. I guess if the build is strong and you know how to use the weapon well you can afford to do it, not to mention, since its an unlimited coating it allows you to spam shots which raises your dps, I might do some testing to see if it affects my hunt times at all.

So I guess what you mean by "the build should indicate what your max dps combos are" is that if you have the spread skill you should use the spread shot finisher, if your have the piercing skill use more dragon piercer etc. Well with my decorations I can't really have either XD

Ok so I suppose at the very least there is no obviously superior build for the bow, max bow charge works, raw affinity works, spare shot also works (I assume). I guess once again its all about the decorations. Although I strongly dislike doing so, maybe I should look up some meta builds to see what the pros are running.

Ok got it, Iframes matter for the bow. The mantra in monster hunter seems to be "forget about the iframes and just dodge" but I guess there are exceptions. I gotta say, the window for it is so tight by default that I am going to have to put some evade window in the build then (I can't even iframe roars most of the time even with a visual cue to help me).

Staying close is a good tip I think, what you described does happen to me on occasion and it can be very frustrating. I guess you kinda wanna be in a range where you can dodge away if you need to but not so far that the monster charges you. Still dunno what you do about acidic glavenus though, his tail is longer than thee long arm of the law, I guess that's where you bust out the evade window 5.

Yeah, I agree that is a good way to think about EE and EW. If they cause you to take less damage that means you have more time to attack, so they are actually boosting your damage. I guess I am just used to the greatsword and lance, which can use EW and EE but they don't need them. Even for fatalis I didn't need them and I had no trouble getting sub 20 minute kills once I practiced enough.

follow up on ammo/deco pts:

-yes i apologize i have acquired the decorations for the bow builds already mostly from my time in base world before IB launched, so obviously a lot of this is going to not apply directly to your situation, more for long term - and i did forget that. decos are totally major, and some Meta build guides have 'progression' builds - stuff that is 'in line with efficiency' but also 'cost effective' if you dont have much resources to draw on, yet which may prove very useful to you, at least to get a sense of what core skills are needed on a given playstyle

-obviously its more effective to use ammo like its a job, and chug that dash juice. i guess i enjoy the bow playstyle, so dont mind if close range coating is not as effective as it should be - i just dislike micromanaging, since we have the claw giving us extra work.

sidetips:

-decoration farming for level 1, 2, and 3 decos 'greatest jagras' or 'the name's lavasioth' event missions in HR. 75 ish runs of jagras should do it, but it might take up to 150. the jagras parts are especially nice since you can meld them into Mega Demondrug.

-decoration farming for level 4 'the wrath of thunder descends' MR event mission featuring tempered zinogre, drops 2 (TWO) sealed feystones, with 100% probability, which makes it better than a 5 box tempered elder dragon mission, that is, if you can kill the zinogre in a timely fashion, otherwise, its best to rinse the elder dragon you have the easiest time with (would rec kushala or vaal)

[Frito-Ley Line]

Actually unreal to see someone suggesting doing 75 runs of greatest jagras when you can get more low rarity decos then you could ever possibly know what to do with just by doing 10x output steamworks during a fest and turning in the melding tickets you get

EDIT: some general advice.
- For stamina management max stamina surge and get constitution to 2 if you're going to use dash juice and the food skill, or 3 if you're only going to use dash juice
- There are multiple ways to start your combo chain, but for stamina efficiency use quick shot -> power shot -> dash -> etc, and if you want to max your coating efficiency by using them up at higher charge levels/close distance while starting a charge do dash -> hold your charge until the target reticle flashes -> regular shot -> regular shot -> power shot -> etc.
- Try to get evade window to 2 at a minimum, but preferably 3. some people like to use evade extender as well but I don't feel like it's necessary
- Always use evade mantle, the damage bonus is too good and it essentially gives you evade window 6. Second mantle is up to you but temporal and impact are standouts
- Outside of the obvious WEX and crit boost skills, try to aim for spread up and normal shots up since the damage bonus is very large (though they're often a pain to slot in)
- Raw bow isn't good but the fatalis bow is actually strong enough to just use as a general bow, and it's actually the best in class for a few monsters so definitely don't overlook it
- If the bow you're using has access to paralyze coating always try to get at least one proc with it (preferably when the monster is enraged). It's free damage. Similarly, it's not the best if you're going for fast times but bow is also one of the only weapons that can mount from level ground (Y/triangle after a dash).
- Always use shaver jewel (clutch claw boost)

[Hammer Of Evil]

Originally posted by Frito-Ley Line:

Actually unreal to see someone suggesting doing 75 runs of greatest jagras when you can get more low rarity decos then you could ever possibly know what to do with just by doing 10x output steamworks during a fest and turning in the melding tickets you get

eh, i don't think you see the bigger picture.

and assuming you actually get enough silver/gold melding tickets, your chance is 1/57 per ticket used 0.017% of your desired decoration coming up, (gold is 1/148 = 0.006%) whereas, on the warped feystone the probability is much higher per decoration in R8, and gives higher probabilities for basically all of the others as well.

additionally, you dont need to finish the greatest jagras hunt. just collect 30 decos, dungpod him, and return from quest, meaning the hunt can be rinsed pretty hard over and over. 75 runs shouldn't take you more than an hour or two, unless your loading time is 5 mins per hunt idk.

collecting the fuel for the steam works will take you a minimum of 3 hrs per 12-24k fuel. and the melding tickets aren't coming out every pull, either.

[Frito-Ley Line]

You can farm steamworks fuel WAY faster than that with the farewell to zinogre event quest (or just doing actually optimized guiding lands gathering and not just mining until the levels reset over and over), and you get insane amounts of steel and silver tickets (you don't need gold for any of the non-4 slot decos iirc)

[Omnicide]

Yeah steamworks is kinda disgusting tbh. Don't get me wrong, I use it too. Strange game design though, really trivializes a lot of things.

[2D > 3D WEEB 4 LIFE]

Originally posted by Omnicide:

Yeah steamworks is kinda disgusting tbh. Don't get me wrong, I use it too. Strange game design though, really trivializes a lot of things.

It's just a band-aid on the gaping RNG wound that plagues the game towards the end.